The Nation; 'Outsourced' or 'Mercenary,' He's No Soldier

THE newspaper advertisements offered an enticing pitch: overseas travel, adventure, good pay. The ability to handle a machine gun was considered a plus. Sound like a Bechtel or Halliburton campaign to recruit workers for Iraq? Try the Cuyamel Fruit Company as it enlisted American fighters to depose a Honduran president in 1910.

Historians describe those recruits as soldiers of fortune, mercenaries. So today, with as many as 20,000 people from around the world working for private security firms in Iraq, the question arises: Are they any different from the mercenaries of old?

Many experts respond with a qualified yes. The word mercenary, they argue, should be reserved for the more rapacious freebooters who travel from war to war, hunting for opportunities to foment unrest and profit from the chaos. Indeed, the United Nations defined mercenaries in 1989 as foreign fighters recruited to undermine or overthrow a government. By contrast, security firms in Iraq have been hired to defend construction workers, diplomats, convoys and pipelines, or to train Iraqi police officers and soldiers, these experts note.

''Use that word,'' said David Isenberg of the term mercenaries, ''and you are indicating they are bloodthirsty, uncontrollable, lacking in honor.''

''That's ridiculous in the case of Iraq,'' added Mr. Isenberg who studies the private military industry for the British American Security Information Council.

But whatever one calls them, today's international security firms like Vinnell, DynCorp and Blackwater USA have much in common with for-profit armies of the past. And as their numbers have exploded in recent years, they are raising many of the same concerns that have dogged soldiers of fortune throughout history.

Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, says that because private security firms operate outside the military command structure, they are not subject to the military's battlefield discipline or rules of engagement. So rules may vary from contractor to contractor, and it is not quite clear who will discipline those who break rules or commit atrocities.

Dr. Krepinevich, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said private guard units are often well armed, but may not be under the same restraints as soldiers. ''Consider people like that riding around in your neighborhood,'' he said. ''That's what the Iraqis have to contend with.''

Thomas D. Schoonover, a history professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and co-author of ''The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930'', said that the Cuyamel Fruit Company's mercenaries thrived on social disorder. ''They didn't kill people wantonly,'' he said. ''But they didn't like authority. They wanted to traipse through the woods with weapons on without having to submit to anyone's discipline.''

Throughout history, military experts and commanders have also worried that mercenaries could not be counted on to hold their place on the front lines when battles turned ugly or resources grew thin.

Before and during the Punic Wars, both Rome and Carthage had to fend off rebellions by mercenary forces that had not been paid. In medieval France, roving ''free companies'' caused such havoc that lords would hire them to attack other fiefs simply to keep them at bay.

And in Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli described mercenaries as ''disunited, ambitious, without discipline, faithless.'' He urged Italian rulers to form homegrown militias instead.

But Deborah Avant, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said Machiavelli may have gotten it wrong. The condottieri (literally contractors), as the Italians called the mercenaries, did a reasonably good job of defending Italy's emerging city-states, she says. In many ways, they resemble today's military corporations, she argues, because they tended to be stable companies that fulfilled their contracts. ''Nobody in those city-states wanted to fight,'' she said. ''So it was easier to contract with these forces to provide protection.''

Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of ''Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry'' (Cornell University Press, 2003), contends that the use of for-profit foreign fighters has been the norm, not the exception, since the dawn of warfare. Only with the emergence of powerful national armies in the last three centuries has the word ''mercenary'' taken on such negative connotations.

''We have this idealized vision of war as being men in uniform fighting for the political cause of their nation-state,'' he said. ''That is actually an anomaly. It describes only the last 300 years.''

Now the pendulum may be swinging back. With the cold war over, the United States and other nations have reduced their forces. At the same time, small wars have increased the demand for military peacekeeping and training. To keep up, the United States and the United Nations have turned increasingly to private contractors.

A similar trend is under way within much of the American military. Private companies now perform many mundane tasks that soldiers did in the 20th century, from peeling potatoes to fixing aircraft engines. ''From 1940 to 1973, the American military got used to having soldiers do everything,'' Dr. Krepinevich said. ''Now we're outsourcing everything, partly because we think it's cheaper.'' For that reason, the use of contract fighters, freebooters, mercenaries -- whatever you call them -- is not likely to end any time soon.

''There is a task that needs to be done,'' Mr. Isenberg said, ''and somebody's got to do it. You could try to do it within the active military. But they are already overstretched and under-resourced. So if you can do it with the private sector, why not? As long as they can get the job done.''